My name is '''D Stall''', and I live (semi-eremitical) on my family's 50 acre, mostly wooded tract in rural southeast Central Texas. From there, I freelance as a webdesigner/developer, and design and maintain the website of [[Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration|The Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration]], among others. Previously, I worked as a registered landscape architect (20+ years) in Houston, Austin and San Francisco.

+

My name is '''D Stall''', and I live (semi-eremitical) on my family's 50 acres of mostly wooded land in southeast Central Texas. From there, I freelance as a webdesigner/developer, and design and maintain the website of [[Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration|The Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration]], among others. Previously, I worked as a registered landscape architect (20+ years) in Houston, Austin and San Francisco.

A Texas A&M University cum laude alum (BS Landscape Architecture & BS Horticulture), I am third in the first generation of my family to earn a degree. I can also be described as the great-grandson of Texas pioneers, grandson of Texas subsistence farmers, and (shamefully) a “city-slicker“ (as my recently departed, dear ole dad would say), seeing how I was born and reared in Houston, post-war (WWII - the “big” one) on the blue-collar, industrial east side.

A Texas A&M University cum laude alum (BS Landscape Architecture & BS Horticulture), I am third in the first generation of my family to earn a degree. I can also be described as the great-grandson of Texas pioneers, grandson of Texas subsistence farmers, and (shamefully) a “city-slicker“ (as my recently departed, dear ole dad would say), seeing how I was born and reared in Houston, post-war (WWII - the “big” one) on the blue-collar, industrial east side.

Revision as of 23:22, December 14, 2008

My name is D Stall, and I live (semi-eremitical) on my family's 50 acres of mostly wooded land in southeast Central Texas. From there, I freelance as a webdesigner/developer, and design and maintain the website of The Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration, among others. Previously, I worked as a registered landscape architect (20+ years) in Houston, Austin and San Francisco.

A Texas A&M University cum laude alum (BS Landscape Architecture & BS Horticulture), I am third in the first generation of my family to earn a degree. I can also be described as the great-grandson of Texas pioneers, grandson of Texas subsistence farmers, and (shamefully) a “city-slicker“ (as my recently departed, dear ole dad would say), seeing how I was born and reared in Houston, post-war (WWII - the “big” one) on the blue-collar, industrial east side.

Baptized and confirmed in LCMS, I first wondered about Orthodoxy in the 70s when I came upon a National Geographic photo of a young girl lighting a candle before an icon in “Great Religions of the World”, a book I had purchased for extra reading in my architectural history class. A classmate informed me of the Greek Festival in Houston, but I never managed to attend. The first Orthodox temple I set foot in was the Cathedral of the Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, in 1992 (possibly during Nativity Lent). It took eight more years of spiritual seeking for me to “find” (or be found by) the Orthodox Church.

Interest in genealogy and my family‘s cultural heritage has deepened my appreciation of Orthodox Christianity. While the apostle St. Pavlos is my personal patron, my family patron is St. Boniface of Crediton. An avid reader and practitioner of the prayer of the heart (I don't go out much - nearest Liturgy is 85-100 miles away), my favorite books include the ”Prologue From Ochrid” by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, and ”The Southern Landscape Tradition in Texas” by John Brinkerhoff Jackson.

But my greatest interest is in synthesizing all these interests toward development of a distinctly contemporary Orthodox Christian lifestyle and culture, inspired by “sobornopravanist” – the local agrarian community as the center of Orthodox church life as manifestated on The Holy Mountain, in Old Russia and during the middle ages in Western Europe.